Category Archives: NYT

As I have been writing a lot lately, the clean little secret of the global economic crisis is that standard economic theory actually performed pretty well. It’s true that few anticipated the severity of the 2008 crisis — but … Continue reading →

Jared Bernstein shakes his head at what he calls “weirdness” at the Washington Post, citing an editorial and a commentary by Robert Samuelson. I second his views, but I’d like to point out something else about Samuelson’s piece. What … Continue reading →

When it comes to inflicting pain on the citizens of debtor nations, austerians are all steely determination – hey, it’s a tough world, and hard choices have to be made. But when they or their friends come under criticism, … Continue reading →

F.D.R. told us that the only thing we had to fear was fear itself. But when future historians look back at our monstrously failed response to economic depression, they probably won’t blame fear, per se. Instead, they’ll castigate our … Continue reading →

Still thinking my way through the Reinhart-Rogoff debacle and related issues, and I think there’s an important point to be made here about the state of macroeconomics. You can already see quite a few people reacting to this affair … Continue reading →

While the Reinhart-Rogoff fiasco is fresh in our minds, it’s worth recalling the other paper that swept through the ranks of the VSPs, briefly becoming orthodoxy, what everyone knew, until people took a hard look at the data. Remember … Continue reading →

I see that both Tyler Cowen and Austin Frakt are offering explanations/excuses for the Reinhart-Rogoff affair in terms of the dynamics of wonk celebrity — basically, the pressure one feels under to take strong positions to attract and hold … Continue reading →

And I’m back. This real life thing is getting in the way of my blogging, so maybe I should give it up. The delay has put me behind the curve on two new entries in the Reinhart-Rogoff affair, by … Continue reading →

Back in 2011 and again in the summer of 2012, a number of economists pleaded with the European Central Bank to intervene in sovereign bond markets, buying troubled nations’ debt to stop the “doom loop” of plunging bond prices … Continue reading →

Joe Weisenthal draws our attention to a development that may surprise many people: French borrowing costs are plunging. (Don’t tell George Osborne — he thinks that low British rates are a unique personal achievement). Here’s the chart for French … Continue reading →